Feeding giant eels

The beach at Hokitika

Sun setting over the Franz Josef valley

It is a Ren or is it a rock?

Crossing the moraine field to Franz Josef

Franz Josef Glacier

That's Ren and I, eating crackers and singing "Poor Unfortunate Souls"

Mount Cook from our dinner table (seriously)

Our first destination for the day was the quaint little town of Hokitika (I love the name). It's a former mining town, though now the primary industry is tourism as far as I can tell. Like many of the coastal towns, it's built along a gentle beach. It is also apparently a local artist denizen (or at least that's what the tourist literature tells you). The primary industry seems to be selling what they call heritage jade to tourists. The stone, known to the Maori as Pounamu, has a historic and a cultural significance to the area and is relatively plentiful in the local Aurahuru River.

Kohji and the kids did a little walking along the beach, while I combed the little shops on the main couple of streets. They actually found another animal carcass on the beach, which they think was a sheep. The kids were quite fascinated by it, and when I asked Rennie about their walk, he was very excited to show me the picture they took of it! I wandered the shops looking at the various jade pieces, most carved into Maori sympbols or fairly traditional cuts. The story with the jade is that it is an heirloom piece handed down for generations, which is very similar to the Chinese jade factory story. They even have a Jade Factory in Hokitika, although there was no similarity to the one in Beijing.

Just before lunch, we decided to check out the National Kiwi Center - a little toursit kitch in the center of town that actually turned out to be fairly interesting. Kiwis are noctunal hunters, and so it's one of these nature centers that has reversed the clock so that visitors can take a look at the animals when they're active. As the kids had already been there when I met up with them, they were very eager to show me through the little place and especially remind me that we need to be quiet otherswise the kiwi will hide. They are rather funny looking bird, a tad furry looking with plump round bodies perced on these skiny little legs. The Center also offered Giant Eel feeding at noon. The center of the place has a massive equarium with a number of eels slithering about. The kids were actually able to feed the eels themselves, with a little help from a staff member and we learned an awful lot about the pre-historic creatures (probably more than I really needed to know about them).

Lunch was our first taste of whitebait, a local fish considered to be a delicacy and especially available at this time of year. I assumed it would be your standard white fish, but it was actually these tiny little fishies fried together in a sort of pancake. You could even make out the little bodies and eyes. Not at all what I was expecting, but fairly tasty.

After lunch, we headed further south with the goal to reach Franz Josef Glacier. Unfortunately, this is also when Ren hit a bit of a wall and had a full scale meltdown. Let me tell you, listening to a child scream while you're barreling along in a campervan is a special kind of unpleasant!

Thankfully, his mood seemed to have improved by the time we arrived at the Glacier a couple hours later, so we decided to head out on a little walk that takes you to a viewing platform. Well, that's what we planned to do. And then we came to an intersection, which pointed in two directions - one our little walk, the other to the end of the forest (which was about 10 minutes further). So we took the unplanned fork for what was supposed to be a 30 minute walk (you see where this is going don't you).

The short forest trail spit us out onto a massive morraine field with enticing views of the Franz Josef Glacier at the other end. The thing about glaciers is that they are big, and because they are big, it's hard to really get a sense of distance. So, we started across the morraine field (keep in mind, we started the walk at about 4:15 after listening to a solid hour of pre-school tatrumming this afternoon). The valley was impressive - a boulder strewn morraine field with forested walls reaching up on other side, a milky blue glacial stream myandering up the middle and the walls scattered with powerful waterfalls. All in all, a rather distracting walk, as the kids followed the boulder path, threw rocks into glacial puddles and generally scampered under the watchul eye of a massive chunk of ice. I had assumed this was part of the 30 minute trek (I assumed wrong). As we were about 10 minutes from the toe of the glacier, I asked Kohji how this could have possibly been timed at 30 minutes. This is when he informed me that the 30 minute walk ended about 30 minutes before where the tree line opened up. Ah well, I was already carrying Ren on my back, what was another 10 minutes.

The kids actually did surprisingly well. Apparently, the trick to keeping Ren happy on a hike is easy access pockets stuffed with snacks. I just kept filling his pockets and he happily munched his way back across the valley floor, with nary a peep (well, except that he kept asking me to sing while we walked. I got some pretty funny looks when I was singing Poor Unfortunate Souls from The Little Mermaid).

The campground has proved to be one of the nicest ones yet, and we lucked into a clear night and a view of Mount Cook. Not a bad dinner view for dinner I have to say (even if we were eating instant noodles and cucumber slices).

Now, we're bunked down in Frank Josef itself, awaiting tomorrow's adventure. It seems the hike was indeed sufficient to knock the kids out (either that or the 1/2 hour they spent on the trampoline at the playground here).

Things we learned today: Giant eels travel more than 6000 kms from ocean to inland lakes and live up to 100 years old.